Category Archives: Historic Travel Essays

Stewart fans owe Michael Ward a great deal. He volunteered to create and post the George R. Stewart web pages, at his own expense. The pages contain an excellent repository of information and links about Stewart and his work. This blog reports the news about GRS; Mike’s pages are the best overview of basic information for Stewart.

We owe publication of the Stewart biography to Mike, as well. Science fiction author G.D. Nordley, a fellow participant in the annual CONTACT conference, suggested I contact Mike and his fellow organizers of the speculative fiction conference, Potlatch, to offer to participate on a panel about their Book of Honor that year, I jumped at the chance: the book was Stewart’s Earth Abides. Mike, the panel organizer Tom Becker, and the others, graciously welcomed me to the program, and the panel.

One of the vendors there recommended submitting my book proposal to McFarland for consideration. Agent Sally van Haitsma did so, and McFarland agreed to publish the book.

So it can be said that Mike Ward, his associates, G.D. Nordley, and Sally van Haitsma brought the GRS biography to life.

Now Mike keeps the GRS pages alive for our common interest. Many of those who visit this weblog are directed here by Mike’s website, so he does a fine job of spreading the word about Stewart.

Mike has his own websites, and projects, and they are interesting and in at least one case wonderful research resources.

He has a site, Hidden Knowledge, for the works of several authors, among those books the great adventure stories of Rafael Sabatini. Sabatini knew how to write a good tale. Like C.S. Forester, Sabatini’s books are about the sea in the 18th century. But Sabatini wrote pirate stories. Like Forester, Sabatini’s work was filmed – Captain Blood and and The Sea-Hawk wonderful swashbucklers starring Errol Flynn, are probably the best-known.

(Please note that the links to buy the books no longer work. So simply browse the site to learn more about Sabatini’s books, and the others Mike lists.)

Another of Mike’s sites is devoted to the art of magazine covers. MagazineArt.org has more than 15,000 examples of cover art and magazine ads on the site – a virtual Smithsonian for the wonderful art of those printed wonders that enriched the lives of Americans and others before television or film or radio – and after, as well.

He has sites devoted to historic travels and travelers. TravelHistory.org, and another for the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The many articles on the travel history page make for fascinating reading, allowing you to be an armchair traveler in the days of the web.

His pages link to other sites, about Burton Holmes, Rafael Sabatini, and George R. Stewart.

Thanks again to Mike Ward, whose GRS pages were the first major web presence for those of us who are fans of Stewart’s work. Mike’s GRS pages bring others to this weblog.